You’d be right if you looked at the title of this article and immediately asked “What in the wide world of sports is a “Tactical backpack?”, and you wouldn’t be alone – I know I did! MobileEdge has made a lot of backpacks for various purposes, including school bags, extra-armored bags for Alienware laptops, briefcases, duffles, and much, much more. Now they are trying their hand at the loonies like me, who insist on making the TSA agents’ eyes bug out with the amount of electronics we carry with us. Behold, the CORE Gaming Tactical Laptop Backpack 17.3″ by Mobile Edge!

If there’s anything this industry likes to butter us up with, it’s laptop bags. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I have over a dozen of them at my fingertips at any given time – I donate them to the local children’s hospital on the regular. They range in quality wildly, and I have a few more that I’ve reviewed or gotten that are at the top tier. It’ll make for a great comparative analysis for this review, as each of them have their own pros and cons. Let’s get down to brass tacks.

First and likely the most obvious statement, this backpack is roomy. Able to hold up to a 17.3” laptop (which, if you carry one that size, I’ve gotta ask how your back is feeling these days), the backpack is built to accommodate a plethora of anything you can throw at it, as we’ll soon discover. I’m carrying a 15” laptop these days, but on any given trip I’m also carrying a monster of a camera, extra batteries, charging equipment, a mini-tripod, my Steamdeck, a controller, a mouse, and entirely too much more. Could this thing handle all that? Yeah, it can – and with space to spare.

Throwing the word “tactical” on something gives me hives. I did my stint in the military and despite being assigned to a combat unit, we rarely referred to anything as “tactical”. Frankly, the only “tactical” gear I had was my webbed gear to hold my equipment. It was only until companies like Under Armour started using it extensively that it recursively made its way back into military jargon. Now anything from shirts to pens to flashlights to pants with entirely too many pockets are referred to as “tactical”. Just the same, some companies took it a different direction, instead using that word to mean “rugged”. I was ready to crucify this bag for being “tacti-cool”, but I’m happy to say I’ve got better news to report.

Read more here: https://gamingtrend.com/feature/reviews/mobile-edge-core-gaming-tactical-backpack-review-what-makes-a-bag-tactical/